Toxic effects of wounding Caulerpa

[StirCrazy]

Well after a couple events that were unexplainable I spent the last week looking for a commen thread.

The events were 1, polyps on my digitata closing up for over a week, and two the loss of my Bangii.

The only commen factor was the large harvest of Caulerpa, digitat was closed up for a week after this and the next time I did it about 3 days after my bangii started having problems swimming and I put him down.

so after doing some reaserch I have came up with the following.

C. taxifolia and C. racemosa are the two most dangerious ones, C. taxifolia being a semertical feather Capulera and C. racemosa being the coment Grape caulerpa.

"Among the many secondary metabolites produced by algae belonging to the genus Caulerpa, caulerpenyne (CYN) is the most abundant cytotoxic sesquiterpenoid to be released."

"CYN, thought to be the most active substance, is involved either in
the chemical defense of the plant against herbivore pressure or within the framework of interspecific competition (antifeedant and antifouling effects)"

"A variety of toxic effects due to CYN have been demonstrated in several
organisms at different stages of their growth. The most harmful effect is on sea urchin eggs, which are killed by CYN (Lem´ee et al., 1993). This molecule, therefore, represents a potential danger to organisms"

"C. taxifolia and C. racemosa react upon wounding with rapid transformation of its main defensive metabolite caulerpenyne. The three acetate groups of this sesquiterpene are enzymatically cleaved within minutes after mechanical damage."

"The significant decline in abundance of amphipods and isopods would have ramifications along the food web"


Anyways this has opened a whole new can of worms for myself and to adjust for it I will be adding fresh carbon when I do harvests.. when I move this fall I will be scouring every chunk of rock I have in a attempt to remove it from my system.

Now I am also hopeing that other might have witnessed results like i have or maby others and have more to add to this descussion. maby some fool proof ways of removing this? To me a small rabit fish is looking better all the time

Steve